Chilate Blanco Si'va Ña Ña

This is from the Costa Chica of Guerrero. Not the beaches the tourists know. The stretch where Ayutla, San Marcos, Ometepec, and Cuajinicuilapa sit, where Mixtec, Tlapanec, Amuzgo, and Afro-Mexican families have shared the same drink for four hundred years. Chilate. Cold, foamed cacao with rice and cinnamon, poured into a jícara. The Ark of Taste records it under its name in the local tongue, Si'va Ña Ña. Esto no es comida de un solo México.

First, what it is not. It is not champurrado. Champurrado is hot, thick with masa, and belongs to central Mexico. Chilate is cold, raised to a foam with rice, and belongs to the Costa Chica. And despite the name, chilatl, chili water, there is no chile in it. The name is older than the recipe. What you taste is toasted white cacao, dark toasted rice, panela, and canela, beaten cold until a thick foam stands on top of the cup.

The cacao is the thing. Cacao blanco, the pale-seeded criollo that grows in the Costa Chica, toasted on the comal until the shells crack. The women grind it on the metate with the rice and the cinnamon until the cacao gives up its fat and the whole thing turns to a dark paste. Then comes the part that takes a strong arm and patience: the foam. You beat it cold, you pour it from high, you work it until the espuma rises and holds. No me vengas con atajos. A blender will get you close. The metate and the hand get you there.

Chilate is not an everyday drink. It is poured at weddings, at funerals during the novenario, at the fiesta patronal, served cold in jícaras with buñuelos to break apart and dip. My mother never made it. She was from Jalisco. But there is a page in her notebook copied from a woman in Ometepec, with one line underlined twice: frío, siempre frío. Cold, always cold. Serve it warm and you have made something else. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.